Background Noise
by CampionSayn
Summary: What makes a pairing flawed? Is it flawed? What are its flaws? Sometimes it's just a matter of considering something nobody else will. Exploration of multiple pairings, slash, het, friendship, family and femslash. First chapter has beeen re-vamped.
1. Say a Little Prayer

So today I decided to revamp this entire chapter because it's well over three years old and it's getting in the way of the other chapters that one-upped it. That, and every time I look over it, I just want to gauge out my own eyes.

* * *

_You could be a hero; you might save a life…  
-Hero, by Superchic[k]_

* * *

He didn't expect it to happen; not at all. If anything the pink loving, Lance dumping, Valley Girl was the last person (last person from the other side of the fence, anyway; even Fuzzy rated higher on the probability scale) Todd thought would save his hide from getting taped to the flagpole at five in the morning on a Monday. Oh, and he wasn't wearing underwear, so he knew that put his chances of getting rescued _at all_ even lower. Usually he would have better chances at winning a free car.

His wrists still hurt because they were still covered in silver, heavy duty tape, but at least he was out of that thorn bush (roses, roses—if he could burn down every bush in the county that grew the foul smelling, Queen of Hearts coveted _weeds,_ he would do it if it wouldn't lead to a lawsuit) and in the relative privacy of the locker room in the basement of the school; a flat, mildew scented towel draped around his waist to safeguard Pryde's virgin eyes (she so was, too; her eyes were focused anywhere but near his face and completely focused on her task as if that would erase the Irish drunken blush coating her skin) while she peeled the tape back slowly.

He flinched again as a piece of tape pulled his sensitive skin in a bad direction and actually yanked off a little of his fine, downy arm hair with it. Kitty apologized and tossed the silver piece into the bin with the rest of its body (squares, triangles, tapers—shapes that came from having no idea what to do and simply being there when enough pressure was applied to tear and tear again).

"'S'okay," Todd muttered, allowing himself the luxury of seeing someone of the opposite sex worried about his comfort, even if it was only for a short time before his hands were released from the bind Duncan Matthews had left him in.

* * *

_-:-  
High hopes and aspirations,  
Ideas above my station, maybe.  
But all this time I've tried  
to walk with dignity and pride.  
-The One and Only._

* * *

There was nothing Evan could do to try and catch Pietro; not at a speed like that, which often led to the white haired devil of a teenaged boy to throw out his shoes every other week after he had repeatedly patched them up (tears and melted rubber didn't go well with those bird thin feet with skin like leather). There was no option the dark teen could take in order get revenge for the trick in the locker (fake pigeons set on a spring load that pushed out and onto Evan when he'd gone to pick up the books and papers he needed for biology class; a trick that hadn't been there that morning when he'd put the books in there before gym) and it was burning his ass as he stalked the grounds nearing the Brotherhood house.

Growling was unflattering. He paid for it dearly when it cut off all of his attention and he was suddenly flying through the air after something he barely even felt spun him around twice and then let him go towards the trench.

The trench was filled with deep rainwater and mud that felt a bit more like clay; slicker feeling and the grind of small round stones dug into Evan's arms as he fell and heard the rounding, snide chuckle that echoed as he looked back to the road.

He saw the jeans with flakes of grass clinging near the ankles before brown eyes went further up and landed on Winter Frost blue eyes that held ridicule as well something Evan had never been able to identify, "Even you gotta admit I got you good, Daniels. My God you're slow."

"I will get you one of these days, Pietro," Evan growled for the second time in five minutes, fishing himself out of the muck and flicking one finger as an afterthought in an attempt to soil Maximoff's pretty-ass face; the bit of watered dirt only managed to smear his fancy shoes, but that was as much of a victory Evan ever thought he would get, so he allowed himself to grin as he went onwards, "I know where you live, after all."

* * *

_-:-  
I never meant to start a war; you know I never wanna hurt you.  
Don't even know what we're fighting for…  
-Battlefield, by Jordin Sparks._

* * *

The pressure on Scott's arm had been increased with the torn off right sleeve of Taryn's formerly beautiful green winter Cardigan, but she didn't know how to make the gaping wound at his left hip stop bleeding.

Honestly, she thought, of all the ways he could have gotten seriously injured, it would have to be by Duncan with a gun registered to the blonde's horrible, (bigger) bigot father. Scott had been exceedingly lucky that he was agile and fast and skilled in combat, otherwise Duncan would have gotten a shot into a more vital area that would have killed the mutant (_'What am I thinking—he's my old boyfriend; who cares if he's a mutant right now for God's sake?!'_), rather than send him head first into the cement where he'd passed out from shock trauma and would have been hurt more with Duncan grabbing another round of bullets if Taryn hadn't had a moment relieved of peer pressure and mob mentality. That rock she'd knocked the jock out with had cut into all ten of her fingers when it impacted with the back of Duncan's skull, but for the moment she felt no remorse.

She didn't want him to die and she felt herself cry in relief when she heard the familiar sounds of Jean Grey in Scott's car swerving around the bend towards their location; tires burning on tarmac were a welcome, distracting noise from the sound of her own fingers squelching in Scott's blood as she used her own hands to put pressure on his hip.

* * *

_-:-  
…Well I saw her yesterday.  
It's you she's thinking of, and she told me what to say;  
She says she loves you, and you know that can't be bed…  
-She Loves You, the Beatles._

* * *

Amara didn't like the smell of some of the wood from the trees she'd blown to pieces wafting crisp smoke as they lay in the piles she'd left them in; the same piles she'd used to hoard the rubble of the sculpture she'd demolished. All of it was covered in heated ash and smelled of her magma debris, and it was doing her no good as she waded through the water of the pool at Xavier's chagrined at not being any calmer than she had been when she'd gone on her own angry spree of destruction and ruin.

"Hate him, hate him, hate him…" Amara continued to repeat over and over as she drifted on her back through the water and stared up at the sky that held clouds that could not have been Ororo's doing as she was in New York visiting her sister. The clouds were milky and bustling together like Pyro's flames when he was bored out of his mind and trying to imagine something more creative…

"Gah!"

She gulped in a little of the water from the pool as she pulled herself out of that train of thinking, spitting and coughing when she re-emerged and made her way to the shallow end.

"Damned lunatic… why I even bother is beyond me…" she grumbled as she sat on the cement outside the pool and found her black bag where she'd left it, along with her extra large towel. She allowed some of her own heat to evaporate the water clinging to her and after pulling her hand away and then putting it back in the position it had been hovering in above the black purse; she pulled out her private cellphone and got even angrier at herself as she dialed a number she could recall in her sleep.

* * *

_-:-  
Please love me, too. I'm in love with you…  
-Say a Little Prayer, My Best Friend's Wedding Soundtrack._

* * *

She absolutely hated the swamp and she was really starting to hate the French Quarter with all of its historic places and all of its people and all of the turns and twists she'd had to take in order to get to the church adjacent to a place she remembered years ago walking into to get a drink and then getting to really know the guy that had kidnapped her for both right and wrong reasons. She couldn't bring herself to hate the church though—what with the way the Thieves Guild had gone through the trouble of dressing it up to meet the standards of two completely unreasonable clans that were trying to hitch their children to keep the piece. She couldn't even count all the clusters of yellow and white roses spun up and held together with lace and ribbons. But she could see the huge doors that would lead to the inside, which was the only thing Rogue wanted to see, anyway.

She walked up the steps like a lady, but kicked in the doors like the affirmative action X-Man she was; flinching a little when the door that had faced the brunt of the kick impacted the wall and broke the window, but she didn't blink at all the heads turned her way from both sides. The guns being drawn didn't even mean anything when she spotted Remy up at the head of the aisle, dropping the visage of being serious and solemn in the face of being married to someone that wasn't Rogue herself.

She drawled, lazy, "Wait. Wait. Stop… Get that smile off'a your face, Swamp Rat, or I'm leavin' right now."

Remy ignored her order and threw in a little hop for joy as well; never mind the priest and his "bride" that looked all too scandalized at the both of them.


	2. Windmills

So….I haven't touched this fic in almost five years and here I am again. Woot. I up-dated this because Xany Kaos was right—Toad after Ascension was really gross. I needed to write something to avoid that image. So here I am.

* * *

_-:-  
…That the Autumn leaves were turning to the colors of her hair.  
-Windmills of Your Mind._

* * *

It was weird to think he would ever find himself in a warm place, a fire blazing before him and heat soaking him through to keep him from dying, but there he was and there he had been for three days without moving too much. He couldn't move or he felt, maybe that he would crumple to shards of skin and bone that didn't look like a normal human's, but twisted and too light.

Walking around after dark when nobody knew he was doing so and when it was well below zero in degrees with snow drifting down on his head had not been a good idea. He acknowledged that the second he woke up in front of the fire and found Nightcrawler piling sheets and socks and a couple lady clothes fresh out of the dryer all over Todd. It was half humiliating and half flattering, but he hadn't been able to say anything at the time.

At the time of his being stuffed under the sheets and his feet being pulled into a pair of black socks that he knew now for a fact belonged to Cyclops, however, he hadn't been able to say anything to regain his dignity. His lungs and vocal chords had still been frozen and Kurt had waved a finger in front of his face to stop him so he could go and get Jean (scary and very unhappy to see Toad in the Xavier mansion study room at half past midnight, hair in tangles she would never allow another person to see in daylight) to communicate in the best non-verbal way possible. Todd had simply said—voice in his head rather fuzzy as he was still barely awake after Kurt had bamfed him in from back behind the school bleachers after the pep rally Todd had fallen unconscious during in the process of trying to pick some pockets and get a decent meal that night—thanks for porting him to somewhere with a fire and that he would be gone when he could feel his legs again.

Xavier had come in at that point, very much awake because of the buzzing in Kurt's head that spoke volumes of the situation.

Todd smirked a little into the fire, recalling how Baldy had called the Brotherhood house (falling apart, the only reason for the telephone still being on was so that the power company could call for payments; Mystique having left them three months earlier and drowning in trying to keep everything together on their own) and invited everyone to stay in the mansion until Todd was feeling better. Lance had been the one that sounded the alarms when Todd hadn't been home that evening, so of course, when Xavier handed Todd the phone, Lance had yelled at the top of his lungs for five minutes before telling Toad to give the phone back to Xavier; the brain powered mutant had to be the one to break it to Pietro and Wanda if they were going to stay a while.

The only one in the mansion that seemed annoyed by the Brotherhood staying until they got back on their feet was Scott—but he was ignored easily when he went to see if Todd was faking hypothermia, frostbite and semi-hibernation and fond that he was wearing his socks and didn't move or make noise when Scott took them back.

Wanda had been down to see him when she got in with the others and seemed a little irked when Kurt brought in more heated blankets (electric blankets, with the power cords and everything) and dumped them on Todd's head; three fingered halls waving the Scarlet Witch off so she wouldn't hex Todd into talking with her. Very odd for fuzzy to do but, then, Toad hadn't been conscious when Kurt had found the green hoodling and screamed his head off when he thought he was dead (_he'd tried to move him from his prone position behind the bleachers and almost threw up when he brain alerted him that when a body was stiff like that, then the person was probably dead_).

Todd opened his eyes very slowly and wiggled his fingers around the blanket he'd been given an hour ago. The smell of Rahne running around after being outside made his nose itch and the rest of his instincts kick in (dogs were enemies to amphibians after all; it was difficult to overcome instinct) and say he needed to wake up.

The smell of brimstone around the corner made him actually want to stay awake.


	3. Take Me Home

_-:-  
Take me home, I don't want to be alone tonight.  
-Cross My Heart_

* * *

Sometimes it was just too difficult to make a person believe in themselves enough to think that they can stand alone forever. It was exhausting and dangerous; especially at night when the owls and bats and bright lights and chemicals spewing from cars came to prey on lowered defenses until the person gave in entirely and just laid down to die on a bus stop bench, gum under the seating and giving off the faint scent of dog urine.

Lance Alvers splayed out on the wood of the bench that was provided by the city for the bus company, a joint that had cracked from a confrontation with Cyclops causing him to give a slight hiss and pull himself up into a sitting position to rub at the sore spot; fingerless gloves chaffing his shirt, but fingers peaking out of the gloves giving comfort in pressing into skin. He would have to pay Summers back for the injury the next time they got into a rumble and if he got the chance.

He still didn't know how his jeep could have broken down when he had finally fixed the engine and it had a full tank of gas just that morning. His baby had not been a part of any of the Brotherhood's activities lately and he hadn't caught anyone screwing with it during school hours (not that the general school population would do any such thing without the fear of his foot being shoved into them with the force of a jackhammer, anyway). Aside from a chick he'd hit on driving her own car keys across the back near the right side blinker, it was practically flawless.

Fumbling around in his pocket for the pack of cigarettes he'd bought the week before and amazingly still almost fully stocked, Lance ignored the lights from other cars driving around a few streets over; light yellow colors with blends of blue and red flicking over the tip of his cigarette once he'd plopped one onto his lips and clicked on his lighter. The lights around town often gave him little twitches to alert him of the beginnings of a migraine, but the nicotine from his lit cigarette quickly smoothed those over into something that had aspirations of being a headache someday when it wasn't too lazy to get up and go to work. Lance could almost believe it was nice out when he breathed out a cloud of rippled grey smoke and it rose into the air for longer than it would have if it wasn't only forty degrees. The cloud would have lasted even longer if he smoked the day before; the day he couldn't feel his feet after walking around the school campus during lunch to go looking for a vending machine out of the general line of sight he could score a freebie out of.

He took another puff of cancer inducing smoke and was momentarily distracted by the joy of the feeling when a sleek red and white car swerved his way and parked some feet away from him. The top was down and Lance was quickly brought to attention that he was staring at Scott Summers in a thick green coat and a scarf that went with candy canes. Christmas right around the corner and everything, seeing the Boy Scout in such colors wasn't that much of a surprise, but Lance rolled his eyes anyway. He would have even made a comment on it as well, but was interrupted when Scott opened his mouth first—thumbs rubbing circles in the grooves of his steering wheel.

"I see Duncan went through with his plan to put sugar in your gas tank."

"…What?"

Scott shrugged, leaning across from the driver's seat to unlock and then press open the door for shotgun, looking a little…Lance didn't know. An untrained eye would think the other was constipated, but to someone who actually knew what that looked like on Summers (_Pietro had been cruel one day months ago with come cappuccino mixed with a special ingredient that he had spread to most of the available drinks on a Friday the school was having a soccer game just before snow came in to douse them all in chill and the urge to make snowball wars_), it seemed more like guilt or shame.

"I didn't actually think he'd go through with it, but seeing as I just passed your car on the side of the road and all the weather channels say it's going to snow in the next hour, I thought I'd play it safe. Get in."

Now he looked completely uncomfortable, averting his eyes and flinching a little when he car dipped at Lance seating himself and shutting the door a little harder than Scott (or any car owner) would have liked.

"What's with this charity, Summers? Wouldn't it be in your best interest to let me just wait for the bus?"

The next inhale he took of his cigarette got an irrationally dark look from Summers when he pulled his blinker lever and pulled into the road; the tires spitting icy water sideways and onto the shoulder of the road, splashing against the bench Lance had been sitting on.

"Would be, if Kitty wouldn't find out. Seeing as she finds out everything, I thought I'd save myself the trouble. Even you getting frostbite waiting for a bus that won't come—you missed the last one an hour ago—isn't worth her hunting me down to yell about equality and how you're a person too and blah-blah-blah. Plus, you helped out during the fiasco with Apocalypse, so…"

As much fun as it was to watch Summers squirm in his own car about paying someone like Lance back for helping out with saving the world with a simple ride to the Brotherhood house, Lance didn't like the flare up of emotion radiating off of the other boy. Mercifully, he reached forward and turned up the radio that had been on only one decibel before Avalanche took his seat; it turned up to blare out the sounds of a young man that sounded more Bohemian than Lance thought Summers would enjoy. Also quite a bit more drawn out, but Scott looked relieved at not having to continue explaining so Lance wouldn't question his taste.

They turned onto another avenue and Lance flicked his finished cigarette into a puddle that Scott slowed down to pass through.

As an afterthought to the idea earlier about the cramp Summers had caused, Lance took out another cigarette and fired up the end with the lighter that popped out of the car itself, right below the radio and probably never having been used before in its entire existence until that moment. Lance slid it right back into its home with a smirk when Scott coughed at the first puff Lance gave the new white stick.


	4. Now I'm Not Alone

I feel vaguely happy to have finished this.

* * *

_-:-  
Once, I had something to lose;  
Once I could deal,  
Once, I was harder to bruise.  
-Once I Was Real._

* * *

She had decided, with ease when she was little, that she'd let him rot in the ground the first chance and never think about it again. She spent a long time in the asylum thinking about him dead and her free to do whatever she wanted—continuing on a little whenever he screwed up and betrayed her for their father or just acted like the giant prick he could be.

Eventually, seeing as she had joined SHIELD with the rest of the Brotherhood, she didn't actually think the situation would come up, anyway. Obviously Wanda and the boys were more than capable of taking care of themselves and the civilians they were sent to protect. Pietro really wasn't on the top of her priority list.

Then the situation came and he ended up fulfilling one of her daydreams. He had died because he'd made her angry enough to throw a hex at him and distract the enemy they had been facing at the same time. She had been injured by the enemy and he had been telling her to get lost while she thought she could still fight and help him even if—and she shivers when she thinks on it alone in her room and squeezing a pillow until it went completely flat in her arms, nails digging into the fabric—he was limping and there was blood she could see sliding down from the back of his skull and onto his neck. The hex had done what she figured he'd wanted it to; broken in the ceiling before her and around the enemy, cutting them all off from the sight of each other.

The ceiling above them had come down hard, what with the room upstairs being filled completely with a crate of false gold, thirteen statues that weighed three hundred a piece and the equipment to melt the false gold onto the pieces and then sell them. She had glanced Pietro's face for a short moment and couldn't stop thinking about how sad he looked even with a small smile, before he had been buried and killed (so the coroner said to her three times while looking over all of the bruises that had resulted from battles weeks before on his alabaster skin) instantly.

Magneto never showed up before or after the funeral and Wanda turned hard on the inside; stone like the kind that had smashed in the head of her twin.

* * *

_-:-  
So thank you for finding the words I couldn't find on my own.  
-Now I'm Not Alone._

* * *

The Kid isn't very fast and skinny as a stickman drawn on a kindergarten child's attempt at a card for a loving parent, but he has a dignity that the older man hasn't seen in a while. It makes him think losing a finger and losing vision in his left eye was worth it if it meant pulling the kid out of the horrible situation he had been in (stuck in a tube filled with green fluid that couldn't have been healthy and experimented on like the rest of the strange people the government rounded up on covert missions and handed over for the greater good of humanity; hands banging against the glass and voice going hoarse after screaming for three hours) and taking him in as his own; even if the kid still flinched a little when he saw him in the morning.

Lumbering over to the cabinet above the sink in the kitchen—a big kitchen that went with the kickass cabin he had built years ago in the woods just outside of some po-dunk nothing town in New York state—big, but emaciated hands dug around for soup that he knows he bought a few months before when he'd gotten captured, yellow eye that still worked trained on the kid as he sat wrapped in the large blanket he'd been given the night before when it became apparent that he had caught a bug while out on training runs in the woods. His forehead was set on the kitchen table and the rest of his form was shaking under the faded red fabric of the blanket (that might as well have been a cape, considering, like the older mutant thought often, everything dwarfed his figure).

Finally discovering what he'd been looking for—Garden's Market chicken soup with herbal additives—a little noise made its way into being and the owner of the cabin turned over to the stove, flicking on the gas and avoiding the flame that spouted up by smacking the metal pan onto the metal above the flame that looked like it could make a star on his palm if he pressed skin to it after it reached boiling point.

"How…" the kid rasped, head still on the table, to absorb the cold feeling, "How long does the flue usually last, Mr. Tolansky?"

Todd—or Toad, as most of his associates tended to call him before he ditched them to take care of a kid they thought would only get in his way—turned from stirring the soup as it boiled, keeping lumps from forming; his eye that had been damaged glinting silver because of the morning light coming in from the windows that decorated most of the rooms aside from the bedrooms, "Eh, for most people, about a week. For you, thought, Logan…I'm thinking more like three days. Maybe less if I feed ya nothin' but soup and oranges."

The kid groaned at the thought of dizziness and a sore throat for even that long and it made Todd chuckle as Logan also slipped the blanket further up to cover his head and blot out the light.

* * *

_I am frolicsome and I am easy, good tempered and free  
And I don't give a single pin me boys  
what the world thinks of me.  
-Saucy Sailor Lad._

* * *

There was very little to do inside the med-wing of the Xavier Institute, but Tabby really didn't complain too much as she had nabbed a deck of cards from Rogue's boyfriend when he'd come earlier to see if she'd gained consciousness. He probably hadn't thought anyone would be next to the southern girl at two in the morning; he'd most likely believed he'd be able to sneak in and out without a problem.

That was exactly why Tabby had situated herself at the bedside of her friend, butt horribly uncomfortable in the plastic chair she'd been in for eight hours already. She hadn't wanted the Swamp Rat to get the chance to talk to Rogue until she was ready on her own terms and well after she'd had time to actually be angry at Gambit. Rogue deserved—had the human and womanly right—to be angry at him without the brunette trying to smooth talk his way out of being in her bad graces for a little while.

She didn't care if he was Rogue's boyfriend and totally sorry for putting her in the situation to get a severe concussion. The second she saw him creep out from the shadows that lead into the med-wing and just out of the Danger Room (something she would have to tell Logan about, if she remembered), she burst to life three bombs in a row and hurled them at his head—all the while maintaining her seat in the uncomfortable chair. She'd only managed to damage an adjacent table with a couple medical books taking the brunt of the explosion, but she'd made her point when one had gone off just behind his head and she got up to kick him right in the junk before yelling at him, "No visitors!"

He'd said something Cajun that she couldn't understand and tripped over one of the blown up books before leaving the way he came.

Tabby was happy to get his cards to play solitaire with herself as well as recall the singed patch on the back of his head she had caused; clipped but red painted fingers flicking one card onto another as the clock turned deeper into a morning hour.

Rogue—who had been being used as the table for solitaire for the last few rounds Tabby had lost to herself—starting groaning and Tabby, without remorse, flung the cards away from the white sheets to take a seat at Rogue's hip, an anxious but also happy smile taking place on her lips when Rogue blinked her eyes open and found the blonde leaning in close enough to lead to an awkward assumption if someone like Bobby Drake walked in at that moment.

"…I'm in the med-wing, ain't I?"

"Oh, yes indeed. The Professor didn't want you just sleeping in your room when you could have been bleeding in the brain and not even know it."

Rogue raked a gloveless hand through her pearly white bangs and snorted in a most unlady-like manner, "And ya got the short stick to babysit my sorry hide. Just great."

"Yes great," Tabby grinned, teeth much too clean for someone that hadn't used a toothbrush since two days before they'd gone on a mission in the bayous of Louisiana at Remy's plead for help, "I can tell you all the juicy details about what happened when you got knocked out."

"I think you're confusin' me for Kitty."

* * *

_I learned to live, half a life  
And now you want me one more time__**.  
-Jar of Hearts.**_

* * *

She was pretty sure it was the very first time that Mystique had ever experienced the feeling of warm arms around her, pressing smooth against her so that the wracking sobs running up from her throat were muffled and almost silenced into Wanda's black shirt. Wanda was also very sure that it would most likely be the last time that Mystique would allow it of herself: seeking solace from a girl—not a woman yet, not matter what Wanda or anyone else said—that was almost half her age.

But, she couldn't help it. Raven Darkholme had been brought to the surface after her children had made it tremendously clear that they were no longer interested in getting to know her in the least. They didn't care about her state of being and they didn't care to hear anymore words come out of her mouth that could potentially lead to a private war between two young people with bright futures ahead and a damaged soul that had been lost to the wages and wants of a manipulator (God, didn't Wanda know that, like a kick in the teeth) that had been too big a part of her life.

Mystique would not have, in any other circumstance, broken down in the crumpling bedroom of her house (barely her house, at that; she'd been away from that for too long, as well) when there was even a possibility of someone hearing her, but she had entered through the window and thought the lock on the door still worked. She had stuffed her face into the pillow—it still smelled of that Smith girl; all explosive burning and tobacco with cinnamon laced in the smoke—and been less angry than grateful that she hadn't known Wanda had entered until her body settled on the edge of the bed and her long fingernails and gloveless palm rubbed atop her shoulder blade.


End file.
